


Hollow Ways

by anguy



Series: Hollow Ways [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Dystopian, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-03
Updated: 2013-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-10 06:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anguy/pseuds/anguy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The first time he met Ygritte, she was sprawled across the pavement, a bruise forming across the side of her face, purple and shining. She’d been in a fight in one of the local clubs, kicked out just as he’d passed by. People stood, bathed in the fluorescent glow of the street lamps, milling about as they watched—curious to see what would happen next. "</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hollow Ways

 

 

The first time he met Ygritte, she was sprawled across the pavement, a bruise forming across the side of her face, purple and shining. She’d been in a fight in one of the local clubs, kicked out just as he’d passed by. People stood, bathed in the fluorescent glow of the street lamps, milling about as they watched—curious to see what would happen next.

“Oi, whatchu’ lookin’ at crow?” She had called somehow managing a scowl through a busted and bleeding lip. Jon found he couldn’t look away.

He’d inched forward—his glasses catching the glare of streetlights as he leaned down to help her up. She swatted away his hand.

He’d never seen anything quite like her. She was all legs, stringy and lithe as a cat with a mass of red curls piled high around her head. Freckles dotted the bridge of her slowly swelling nose. She was beautiful.

“Fuck off then,” She sneered at him and he stepped back.

They were all the same, he knew—these wildling girls. All brash and wild and absolutely batshit, fucking insane. Another girl, of the same build as this one—arrived to help her up. She pushed herself off the ground, spit blood and pulled herself to unsteady feet. She lurched once, pulled a pack of cigarettes from a handbag swinging between her arms and lit up, right there pulling in a deep lungful.

 “You smoke, crow?” She asked that sneer still playing at the edge of her lips. Her eyes caught the light—pale and harsh and somehow biting deep down into his skin.

“Stop calling me that.”

“What? Crow?” She grinned, “You are a crow though, yeah?”

Jon felt suddenly very aware of himself. Qhorin had disappeared on uncertain terms half an hour into their watch, leaving Jon alone in the heart of the Free Lands. He pushed his glasses up his nose, wishing he was wearing something, anything other than the standard black uniform and badge of the Night’s watch.

“I am a man of the Night’s Watch,” He sighed, directing his answer to his feet, “Yes.”

“Well, take a lesson then crow, we ain’t like your women back home. We’ll cut you sure as fuck you.”

Jon winced at that, causing her to laugh harshly. She stubbed her cigarette into the cracked pavement and grinned at him once, still laughing as she turned away, stalking off on unsteady legs into the darkness.

“Fly home now, crow,” Someone called in the darkness. People began to disperse now that the show was over. Jon did nothing, sighed and walked off to find a place to radio Qhorin, wondering what to make of her.

 

***

“You fancy her, Snow?” Pyp jeers rougly.

“I was just telling the story, Pyp,” he says though he knows they don’t believe him, and is not quite sure if he believes _him._

“Yeah, yeah; we’ve all been dying to hear about Lord Snow’s first trip beyond the wall into the skeevy slums, wildlings call a city,” Pyp smiles, clapping Jon on the back.

Even now he is glad to be back amongst his brothers. There is something entirely familiar about the weight of the Wall pressing down upon them from the common room. He is comfortable here, lounging on a shabby couch worn by the asses of hundreds of Night’s Watch men.

The Wall surrounded a quarter of the city of the free folk, a triangle of steel imposed on steel stretching north from coast to coast, 700 feet high, manned by men who dressed only in black. If it could even truly be considered a city and not merely small brick boxes stacked upon smaller brick boxes to ponderous heights, where they swayed precariously in the slightest breeze, or seemed to.

Inside the city, closest to the Wall were littered with clubs, where every type of drug could be found and imbibed. Being a man of the Night’s Watch, you were forbidden from engaging, but that didn’t stop many.

Farther out stretched the wilderness, uninhabited and uninhabitable—as far as Jon or anyone else knew. Out there sentinel pines grew up like skyscrapers, snow piled in twenty foot drifts and direwolves stalked the planes.

The city itself was a horrible thing, ridden with detritus and death—small wonder the people turned to other means to lessen the weight on their shoulders. Constantly the pungent odor of decay and shit filled your nose, the other two if you were lucky. All in the, the wildlings were bred for hard living—no wonder their women were so wild.

“Well fuck Pyp, you asked,” Jon intones, though the conversation that seems to have moved on without him.

Pyp gives him a sidelong glance. Grenn leans into his shoulder, whispering; “He’s just jealous Jon, The Pomegranate has got him on laundry duty.”

“I heard that,” Pyp’s ears draw lower on the side of his head as he scowls, “You whisper louder than the morning alarm, Aurochs.”  

“What’d she look like again, Jon?” Sam Tarly asks from the corner of the room, a small holographic tablet propped up on his lap.

Jon explains in uncertain terms, attempting to convey her hideousness. He finds himself spending too much time describing her flat nose, those harsh pale eyes and the seemingly endless mass of red curls blossoming from her scalp like flames.

The talk turns to other things quicker than Jon could have hoped. He’s exhausted. Double patrols along the Wall and the stress of tonight have been compounded to make him wish for sleep more than the company of his brothers. He listens to them talk until the overhead pings for change of the guard and they head off to the barracks.

Jon feels a hand upon his arm as he creeps down the hallway and turns back, to find Sam staring at him, his large doe eyes shadowed by the darkened hallway.

“Jon, you know you can’t,” He says quietly. Jon doesn’t fail to miss the note of sadness in it.

 _As if I didn’t know._ “Yeah, Sam,” Jon finds himself sighing again, “I know.”

“No I mean—not just for your sake Jon.” Sam says, leaning in, “But for hers.”

 _Thank the fucking gods for your absolute obviousness, Tarly._ He’s more bitter than he wants to let on, _As if she wouldn’t rip me limb from precious limb anyway._

“Thanks, Sam,” Jon manages a yawn, “I’m going to bed.”

He almost feels it squirming inside him, somehow alive but not—it’s part of his vow, part of his burden and part of being a man of the Night’s Watch.

 

***

The morning bell is a cacophony. Not really a bell as much as an endless screeching inside Jon’s interface. It’s directly in his ear canal. He turns over, shrugging into his blankets pulling them closer around them and savoring the warmth.

“I’m up,” he sighs, “I’m up, goddamn.” It cuts off instantly, blissful silence.

 _“Appointment with Jeor Mormont this morning scheduled for Jon Snow,”_ the female voice of his interface chimes.

“So Jon,” The Old Bear reclines in a worn leather armchair as Jon enters, “How was your first patrol?”

 _He knows,_ Jon is thinking as if there is no other subject in the world. _So what if he does know? It’s not like anything happened, or could have happened._

Somehow that doesn’t make anything easier.

“It was fine sir,” Jon replies though he attempts to not meet Jeor’s eyes. The man has a steady gaze—once you catch it, it’s hard to turn away. “Nothing special.”

“You’ve met Ygritte,” It was not a question. Jon wonders briefly who exactly Ygritte is—then he catches the blink, feels the slightest twitch in his neural interface and bam, her face flashes on a wall length screen beyond the Lord Commander’s scowl. It’s a recording of the night before from his own eyes.

Jon wants to ask. Feels the question catch in his throat, _is she…?_ Somehow he knows she isn’t, couldn’t be, it would dull that fire of hers, make her somehow obsolete. _So what am I?_

Jon doesn’t reply. He leans against the wall with his hands pressed behind his back, clenched.

“Oh seven hells Jon,” The Lord Commander laughs gruffly, “Don’t be so melodramatic.”

When he catches Jon’s look (eyebrows knotted together, mouth a thin hard line), he laughs, though you couldn’t truly call it a laugh—more the roar of a steam engine emptying itself from the man’s throat as he guffaws.

“I’m sorry, sir?”  Jon asks, confused.

“You think you are the first brother to be entranced by one of these Wildling girls?” He catches Mormont’s glance. He’s doomed. There’s no way he can look away now. _Well, shit._

“Yes, sir.”

“Snow?” The Lord Commander is smiling—or at least as close to smiling as the man can get. His upper lip is definitely curled upward, even if it is barely noticeable.

“Sir?”

“Sometimes…” The Lord Commander turns way, staring at the mass of red hair, the lips curled up in a sneer although still bleeding. Her blood catches the streetlamp, dark and red and so very red. Those pale eyes stare right through him. Somehow they are worse than Jeor’s. “I wonder about you, Snow.”

“I’m sorry, sir?”

“Just an old man’s ponderings,” The Lord Commander sighs and somehow the sound of it seems to decompress the room. “You’re relieved Snow, I expect you to return to your normal duties until your next scheduled patrol. When is that?”

“Three weeks, Sir.”

Jeor nods and Jon turns to leave. He’s at the door, fingers darting quickly to input the correct security code when-

“Jon?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t let her go to your head. You are not the first, you certainly won’t be the last. Do your duty, nothing else,” Jon doesn’t dare meet his eyes this time, “You know the stakes as well as any man.”

“Yes sir.” And he leaves.

 

 

 

 


End file.
